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So there’s this Powerpuff Girls episode, right? 1/15 https://twitter.com/populismupdates/status/1285638551221280768
I’ve made this reference/analogy before, but it would’ve been many followers (and deleted tweets) ago and the end of the 2020 primary really bore it out, so here @QuintusHaterius, it’s a thread now
So there’s this Powerpuff Girls episode: “Monkey See, Doggie Do.” The premise is Mojo Jojo steals a magic Anubis head that lets him turn people (including the Powerpuff Girls) into dogs. They beat him by biting him in the butt so he drops the head. It’s a run-of-the-mill episode.
There’s a follow-up episode: “Monkey See, Doggie Two”, and it’s one of my favorites of the series. The head is missing again, and the Girls get confused that the scheme feels familiar. When they catch up to Mojo Jojo, he goes into a monologue about what he learned from last time.
Specifically, he goes back over the part where he got bit on the ass, pulling it up on a monitor and rewinding and zooming in on scenes from the last episode like he’s watching the Zapruder film.
So Mojo Jojo decides the solution is obvious: don’t turn the Girls into dogs, and wear a metal plate on his ass. “No dogs, no biting, no dropping.”
He asks the Girls what they’re going to do now that he’s planned to counter them so well, and they - still being superpowered humans - say “we’re going to kick your butt”, promptly beat the shit out of him, and once again the day is saved thanks to the Powerpuff Girls.
The analogy here is hopefully intuitive, but just to make it explicit: Bernie Sanders took a “no dogs, no biting, no dropping” approach between 2016 and 2020.
Sanders got relatively close to beating Clinton in 2016 by cutting most of her strengths out from under her. Experience became establishment, bipartisanship became indifference, evolution became insincerity, playing the political game well became corruption.
Where Sanders got bit was by casting Clinton as an established, moderate figure - voters concerned about electability saw that as a positive and, with no options besides her and Sanders, stuck with her. Combined with her other strengths in a primary electorate, that was decisive.
Sanders 2020 went all-out to address the ways Sanders 2016 backfired. “Bernie beats Trump” was a major slogan, the campaign pushed general election polling, he spent 2017-2019 raising his profile as a safe Democrat and trying to win over loyal party voters with unity plays.
Additionally, Sanders prioritized holding together his coalition and bringing in new voters on the expectation of a split field. Voters coalesced around Clinton because they only had two options; give them more, and Sanders can build a lead first (as seen after Nevada).
Sanders 2020 fell apart because much of the strategy revolved around tweaking the 2016 campaign *without recreating the conditions* of the 2016 campaign.
Sanders was never going to beat Joe Biden on electability; all that did was make people who wanted an outsider candidate look toward Warren or Buttigieg. He wasn’t a safe pick among loyal Democrats because alternatives like Bloomberg and Klobuchar looked safer.
And of course, coalescing still happened. Sanders had no plan for a candidate with 50%+1 support because the theory was Hillary wasn’t really that popular, she was just the only option. When Biden cleaned up SC/Super Tuesday despite Bloomberg and a crowded SC field, it was over.
I think there’s a universe where Sanders wins the 2020 nomination, but it would’ve required a brand new strategy. Instead he ran with a “no dogs, no biting, no dropping” version of 2016, and Biden kicked his butt.
